I am so glad to see you again. For two weeks I studied many things and
I found that to have so many friends in this area is quite unusual. Back
East they find pretty difficult to have good students. Of course there are
many people who are interested in Buddhism, but quite few people are
interested in pure form of Buddhism. They are interested in studying the
teaching of Buddhism, or philosophy of Buddhism and they are comparing our
Buddhism to another religion and they understand intellectually how
Buddhism is good for intellectual mind. But whether Buddhism is
philosophically deep or good or perfect is not our point. To keep our
practice in its pure form is our purpose. When I felt something even
blasphemous when they talk about how Buddhism is perfect as a philosophy
or teaching without actually knowing what it is.

To practice zazen in this way, with group, is the most important thing
for Buddhism and for us. There is nothing so important than this practice
for us because this practice is the original way of life. Without knowing
the origin of things we cannot appreciate the result of our effort. Our
efforts must have some meaning. To find meaning of our effort is to find
our original source of effort. We should not be concerned about the result
of our effort so much, before we know the original source of our effort.
If the origin is not clear and pure all our effort will not be pure and so
the result of our effort will not satisfy you. When we resume to our
original nature, and starting from the original nature, making our effort
incessantly, we will find out, we will appreciate the result of our
effort, moment after moment, day by day, year by year. This is how we
should appreciate our life.

Those who attach to the result of our effort only will not have any
chance to appreciate our effort because the result of our effort will not
come forever. But if your original intention is good all what you do is
good and you will satisfy with whatever you do. Zazen practice is the
practice to resume to our pure way of life, beyond gaining idea, or beyond
fame and profit. By practice we just keep our original nature as it is,
for the pure original nature, there is no need to intellectualize what it
is, because it is beyond our intellectual understanding and there is no
need to say, to appreciate because it is beyond our appreciation. So just
to sit, without any gaining idea, with purest intention to remain quiet,
as quiet as our original nature is, is our practice. Here in this zendo
there is no fancy idea. Once in a week we just come and sit, and after
communicating with each other we go home and resume to our own everyday
activity as a continuity of our pure practice, enjoying our true way of
life. This is very unusual.

What you study…what you…wherever you go people may ask you what is
Buddhism…(with notebook). You may imagine how I feel. But here we just
practice zazen, that’s all what we do. And we are happy in this practice.
For us there is no need to understand what is zen. We are practicing
zazen. So, for us, there is no need to know what is zen, intellectually.
This is, I think, very very unusual….unusual for American society. As you
know, back East there are many way of, many patterns of life, according to
their religion. So, it is maybe, it is quite natural to talk about what
the difference is between various religions and to compare one religion to
the other religion. But for us, there is no need to compare Buddhism to
Christianity. Buddhism is Buddhism and Buddhism is our practice. So we
don’t know even what we are doing when we just practice pure mind. So we
cannot compare our way to some other religion, but we don’t know how to
compare our religion. Some people may say Zen Buddhism is not religion.
Maybe so. Anyway, Zen Buddhism is religion before religion. So it might
not be religion in usual sense. But it is wonderful, even though we do not
study religion, what it is intellectually, or without any cathedral or any
ornament, it is possible to appreciate our original nature. This is quite
unusual. This kind of unusual experience will be found out when you
practice it without any gaining idea.